Blog posts

Resilience to environmental hazards

This blog post by Malcom Graham, an SSCP DTP student, is part of a series on Responding to Environmental Change, an event organised by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded Doctoral Training Partnerships at Imperial (SSCP), and the University of Reading and the University of Surrey (SCENARIO).

See the full list of blogs in this series here.Road landslip

Environmental hazards are becoming more frequent and severe, with potentially serious impacts on people, supply chains and infrastructure globally. Advancing our knowledge and understanding of these hazards, and the processes involved, will allow us to better predict, plan for and manage the risks in order to increase resilience to these changes.

This session focussed offered perspectives from academia (Imperial College London), the world of (re)insurance (Willis Re) and the charity sector (Oxfam).

Evaluating risks

David Simmons, the Head of Strategic Capital and Result Management at Willis Re, began proceedings and impressed us by speaking with no slides or notes, describing it as a ‘liberating’ experience. Despite (or perhaps helped by) the absence of visual aids, his delivery was nevertheless engaging and humorous.

His talk focussed on the world of reinsurance, which he assured us was the ‘sexy’ part of the insurance sector, specialising as it does in catastrophe risk. He contrasted this with the banal nature of regular insurance work and the social death that ensues for most practitioners.

We were told that reinsurance, which covers the insurance companies themselves against major disasters, is suffering from too much capital. Stoically, David explained the reasons behind this: essentially, due to financial uncertainty in other sectors, no one else could offer the low risk and high returns on investment now commonplace in the reinsurance industry. This he attributed to a much greater understanding of catastrophe risk over the last few years than had previously existed.

Following on from Don Friedman’s modelling of hurricanes in the 1980s, which provided a basis for hazard and probability analysis, David explained how there has since been massive investment in producing ever more reliable models to understand these elements. Indeed, the process of developing models in itself seems to have driven the understanding of various components and allowed constraints to be placed on the ‘unknown unknowns’, a Rumsfeldism which seems to make its way into most talks on modelling these days.

The price of reinsurance has apparently dropped substantially in recent times, driven by the unprecedented levels of investment. In particular, we were told that reinsurance for many parts of the developing world comes at negligible cost, due in part to a reduction in the number of deaths from droughts as a result of more reliable aid. Although this is clearly a positive development, David was keen to point out that the arrival of aid was often too slow to prevent significant human suffering and damage to assets and infrastructure. The focus has therefore turned to more timely interventions and having better systems in place for disaster response.

We learnt that insurers are now playing an important role in driving best practice from governments, with many African countries having to present draft disaster response plans, audited reports on actual responses implemented by the government and the results of anti-corruption tests before they can join insurance programs.

David’s talk closed with commentary on the growth of various large-scale insurance schemes, many of them covering multiple countries. He cited the example of the African Risk Capacity, which is expanding from 5 to 10 members, and a scheme in the Caribbean which is now expanding into Latin America. He did highlight some pitfalls with the more inclusive approach to insurance, contrasting the approach to flood insurance in the UK, where higher risk properties pay an additional premium, with the French system where all households pay the same, thereby removing some of the incentive for individuals to reduce their risk.

Improving resilience

Our second talk of the session came from Martin Rokitzki, former resilience advisor for climate change adaption at Oxfam. Humbly professing to be ‘the least scientific person in the room’, he could nevertheless point to 15 years of practical experience working on climate change and environmental issues.

His talk began by looking at what is actually meant by the term ‘resilience’, which appears to have numerous definitions relating to one’s ability to cope, adapt, prepare or thrive when faced with shocks, stresses or uncertainties.

When presented with such an uncertain framework, we were unsurprised to learn that there is no ‘cookie-cutter or cook-book’ for resilience and that the term may be applied to a huge range of social and economic groups. By talking about his experiences with Oxfam, Martin was at least able to narrow his focus to addressing the resilience of the world’s poor.

Even within this constraint, understanding hazards and impacts was presented as a multi-faceted exercise. Variations in the spatial extent of damage, its intensity, duration, rate of onset and level of predictability could all have profound effects on the planning process. Counterintuitively, Martin felt that slow-onset hazards were often the hardest to address and his talk focussed on how to deal with challenges of that nature, such as the East African food crisis, glacier melt in Nepal and salt intrusion in Tuvalu.

We were told that Oxfam’s approach to resilience involves 5 key areas: livelihood viability (i.e. the economic buffer to disaster); innovation potential; contingency resources and support access (i.e. provision of aid); integrity of the natural and built environment (in the case of the extreme poor, they are directly dependent on the surrounding natural environment); and social and institutional capacity (i.e. governance).

In contrast to the preceding speaker, Martin’s presentation abounded with eye-catching schematics, highlighting various approaches to disaster management. Key to these were the integration of policy and projects to get a successful outcome. To illustrate this, he presented us with the ‘Cycle of Drought Management’ which moves through stages of preparedness, disaster response and relief, reconstruction and mitigation. Alas, the paucity of data in 80-90% of affected areas means that the preparedness stage is often a huge challenge. Our presenter highlighted this as a key reason for Oxfam to collaborate more closely with scientists.

Towards the end of his talk, Martin touched on Oxfam’s R4 approach to risk, encompassing risk reduction (managing resources well), risk transfer (insurance), risk taking (credit for investment) and risk reserves (savings). Without this sort of strategy, seasonal food shortages could easily become year round famines. As part of this Oxfam has been helping to administer financial services in remote rural areas and developing a focus on flexible and forward-looking decision making.

Martin’s final message was that we need more collaboration between the ‘thinkers’ and the ‘doers’ – a clear call for the science community to engage more directly and more frequently with aid agencies and other environmental organisations.

Assessing impacts

Our final speaker of the session was Imperial’s very own Professor Ralf Toumi, who described his ongoing work on the OASIS project, an open access model for looking at the impacts of extreme weather events on the built environment.

His main driver for the project was the limited number of companies providing assessments of risk in this area, thereby giving a fairly narrow field of views on risk to the insurance sector. He reflected that this has not been helped by a continuing barrier of information between researchers and insurers and the ‘black box’ approach to disaster modelling which exists within the commercial world.

Following the previous speaker’s flurry of eye-catching diagrams, Ralf was not shy to present a few schematics of his own, illustrating the concepts behind OASIS. These highlighted the user’s ability to select combinations of models to give a tailor-made view of risk, including a broader spread of results and a greater understanding of model bias and uncertainty. To highlight the point, Ralf asserted that vulnerability modelling (i.e. the damage caused by an event) has a much greater level of uncertainty than hazard modelling. Indeed, one of the key challenges of the OASIS project has apparently been to get hold of datasets on damage, information which some players in the industry have been reluctant to provide.

A further challenge, we were told, is the effect of giving insurers greater experience in using this modelling framework: the desire for greater complexity. Whilst models appear to be ever more powerful (a 30 year dataset can apparently now be used to predict a 1 in 1000 year event!) there is a serious challenge to translate this complexity from the academic / journal environment to insurance professionals. There has also been a need to standardise the wide array of different data formats associated with OASIS’ component models.

Despite these challenges, it appears that OASIS is flourishing. Our presenter proudly displayed a series of media articles after their press release went viral, along with a list of 44 members of the OASIS Loss Modelling Framework, a list that includes numerous insurance and reinsurance companies. Their many associate members include a variety of government bodies, academic institutions and IT companies.

Long-term planning

A combined question and answer session followed on the three presentations. It began with the question of how all these ‘big complex’ models have been validated with data. Professor Toumi agreed that validation is a huge issue, although hazard validation is much easier to do, using historical datasets, than validating predictions of damage, which sometimes diverge wildly. David Simmons was able to point to a recent paper he had written on model validation and highlighted that the non-stationary world we live in means that there are never sufficient data. Nevertheless, he believed that even non-validated models are better than nothing and that the modelling process aids understanding as much as the end result. He also highlighted that satellite datasets can act as a useful first-pass method for validating models.

The second question focussed on how we transition from looking at short-term resilience to combatting longer-term changes. Martin Rokitzki responded that although we live in a short-term world, transformative scenario planning is more commonly done nowadays, which is often based on narratives rather than data alone. Adaptive management is also more common.

Another audience member (currently working for one of the London mayoral candidates) wondered what question we should pose to mayoral candidates of large cities in relation to risk management and resilience. The panel were somewhat stumped by this, but (ironically) opted to answer the question about a question with another question: Martin Rokitzki wondered who has responsibility for risk management. Should adaptation be a government service, should it be borne by individuals or even by the private sector?  David Simmons cited an example of the World Bank trying to cover industrial areas against earthquakes and reward good design through financial incentives. Unfortunately, the scheme struggled through a lack of political will to take decisions which might be unpopular with their electorates, despite having clear long-term benefits.

The final question related to the possible impacts of a catastrophic asteroid impact and the huge disparity between the insurance fund set aside to cover Florida’s coastline from storm damage and flooding ($2 trillion) compared to a much smaller sum assigned globally for larger-scale catastrophes like asteroid impacts ($0.5 trillion). David Simmons responded that the insurance industry focuses on the short-term, partly due to the 5 year tenure of most CEOs. This makes asteroid impacts beyond the timescale of concern. Another contributor to the disparity is that flood insurance is governed by a regulator in Florida. Despite this, David felt that Florida now has enough reinsurance capacity and that there is now a need to better understand hazards like asteroids.

And as we all dwelt on what sort of cosmic destruction may be in store, the session was brought to a close, leaving us with the much simpler conundrum of what to have for our lunch.

Watch a video of the talk on our YouTube channel.

Managing environmental change

This blog post by Rebecca Emerton, a Scenario DTP student at University of Reading, is part of a series on Responding to Environmental Change, an event organised by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded Doctoral Training Partnerships at Imperial (SSCP), and the University of Reading and the University of Surrey (SCENARIO).

See the full list of blogs in this series here.

In addition to natural variability, human activities are causing rapid, large-scale climate and environmental change. Understanding how these processes work as a whole Earth system can improve our understanding of the impacts of these changes and inform responsible management. One key challenge is how we monitor and record environmental data, and the role this data can play in managing the environment.

The third challenge area of the Responding to Environmental Change event explored the management of environmental change, including how environmental data is monitored and recorded, and challenges faced in utilising this data.

Monitoring the environment from  Space

Jacquie Conway, Head of Institutional Relations UK within Airbus Defence and Space – Geo-Intelligence, opened the afternoon with a discussion of the practical applications of Earth Observation (EO) data. A key question was presented: “Why Space?”, highlighting the benefits of EO for providing evidence used to assess how much land change is occurring, where this land change is taking place and the causes and impacts of the change, alongside uses in model validation and determining possible future changes. Examples were given such as forest mapping and monitoring, in order to identify degradation and illegal logging, and the changes in these over time. Further examples include food security and crop sustainability – analysis of drought areas and possibilities for improved farming management practices, and urban planning through monitoring land use change and developing cities. Disaster management is also key, with EO data and mapping used in emergency response, recovery and preparation.

The challenges associated with EO and Big Data are continuously evolving, with increased volume, diversity and value of EO data, in conjunction with non-space data. Aspects such as quality, continuity, timeliness and uniqueness of data are significant in approaching the Big Data challenge. Emerging solutions include the Airbus Processing Cloud, which provides a platform for hosted processing, with examples given of completed successful processing and reprocessing campaigns. Where the previous data processing time for one mission was greater than 700 days, it is now possible to process this data in just 2 weeks through use of the Airbus Processing Cloud. Alongside data processing, the platform will enable development of new products and services through a partnership approach, with the intent to support SMEs, research organisations and Universities, among others.

Copernicus was introduced as the European Flagship Earth Observation Programme to monitor environmental change, by Jacquie Conway, and discussed further by Dr Farhana Amin (Defra). Copernicus is led by the EU and co-ordinated by the ESA, and is the European response to a global need to manage the environment, providing necessary data for operational monitoring of the environment, and for civil security. With a €3.8bn investment in Copernicus, 6 missions (each with 2 satellites) will be launched, resulting in up to 8TB of new, open access data on the environment, per day. These missions will provide valuable information for land, marine and atmosphere monitoring, alongside emergency management, security and climate change services.

Environmental policy and regulation

Dr Amin gave a policy perspective on managing environmental change, highlighting the responsibilities of Defra for policy and regulation on environment, food and rural affairs, including the protection from floods and plant/animal diseases, alongside improving the environment and rural services. The statutory obligations of Defra range from monitoring pesticide residues on food, to managing natural resources through monitoring of air quality and biodiversity. Emphasis was placed on Evidence-Based Policy, using observations, knowledge and scientific research to provide the basis for all policies. Examples were given of current programmes such as Cefas – the Clean Seas Environment Monitoring Programme, which aims to detect long-term trends in the quality of the marine environment through collection of high quality, standardized data. Other examples include the monitoring of bathing water quality, and UK Surveillance Schemes involving partnerships between the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), NGOs, research bodies and volunteers to monitor wintering and breeding birds, butterflies, bats, plants and other mammals.

Satellite applications also have a long history of use within Defra, for research and monitoring of land use, roads and marine environments, and GPS data for forestry monitoring, flood monitoring and field sample collections. Again, challenges with EO were discussed, such as the highly complex processes involved, the need for high quality data and regular analysis, working around multiple partners and methodologies, and the resource intensive nature of environmental monitoring.

Understanding the ‘Critical Zone’ for life

Professor Anne Verhoef (University of Reading) provided a research perspective on managing environmental change, discussing steps towards an improved understanding and sustainable management of the ‘Critical Zone’ (CZ), which extends from groundwater reservoirs to soil, to the surface and lower atmosphere – in other words, the zone in which we live. The CZ affects food, water and energy resources, and plays a major role in our weather and (micro)climate, also allowing us to mitigate the effects of extreme events and environmental change. Advances in monitoring of the CZ at many time and space scales (for improved understanding and management), include novel monitoring of field-scale soil moisture and a wireless underground sensor network. Also on the theme of Earth Observation, imaging such as X-Ray CT imaging and remote sensing play a role in understanding and managing the CZ.

Another key aspect is modelling of the CZ, using various models to study part of, or the entire, CZ, such as land surface models (within global circulation models, e.g. JULES), groundwater models, and Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere-Transfer (SVAT) models. SVAT models can further be coupled with remote sensing (EO) data of multiple types and at a range of spatio-temporal scales, leading to more generic tools for environmental research and management. Versatile tools exist allowing the calculation of crop yield, photosynthesis etc., such as the SCOPE model, which is an SVAT model supporting the direct interpretation of EO data. It was concluded that improving models to include more realism, and combining them with EO and remote sensing products, alongside the use of novel in-situ monitoring techniques (for improved ground data), will improve our understanding of the CZ and help move towards sustainable management of environmental change.

Benefits of collaboration for sustainable management

Both the similarities and differences between the perspectives from business, policy and research, and the challenges faced in using EO data for the management of environmental change, show the benefits of collaboration and partnerships, alongside the advances and extensive work towards sustainable management of the changing environment.

Watch a video of the talk on our YouTube channel.

The Road to Paris 2015 – the UK’s postition

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog

This blog post by Samantha Buzzard, a NERC student at the University of Reading, is part of a series on Responding to Environmental Change, an event organised by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded Doctoral Training Partnerships at Imperial (SSCP), and the University of Reading and the University of Surrey (SCENARIO).

See the full list of blogs in this series here.Rooftop view on the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

To conclude the Responding to Environmental Change meeting Matthew Bell, Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, outlined the position of the UK in relation to climate change and the issues that could be faced at the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) at the end of this year. At the beginning of his talk he emphasised that the credibility of the Committee on Climate Change depends on properly interpreting the science of climate change and also that the committee should feedback into the scientific community through signalling the gaps in the evidence and determining what research would be most valuable in the long term.

The UK at present

Matthew made it clear that most of the debate in the UK was not whether climate change is happening, but around the uncertainty of the levels of change and its impacts. This was highlighted only a few days ago when David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband made a pre-election pledge to uphold the climate change act, which holds the UK to a statutory 2050 target for emissions reductions. In fact when the act was first introduced in 2008 it received massive cross-party support with only three MPs voting against it.

It is because of this act that Matthew was able to speak to us – it established the Committee on Climate Change as an independent advisor to report back to the government annually on the UK’s progress towards meeting the five year legally binding carbon budgets that the country has been set in order to meet the 2050 emissions target (the Committee also suggest the levels that these five year targets should be set at when they are planned). The Committee also gives an assessment of the country’s adaptation to climate change, ensuring that actions taken are in line with the level of risk expected.

CCC graph

The UK’s 5 year carbon budgets. The UK met the first budget but mostly due to the economic slowdown. (Source Matthew Bell, Committee on Climate Change).

Issues in Paris

There will be many areas under discussion at COP 21, ranging from pledges and the monitoring of them once they are made, support from high to low income countries (both financial and non) and the actions required from ‘international’ sectors such as aviation and shipping.

However, the focus here was on the wider co-benefits of tackling climate change. Matthew stressed that when looking at these issues the Committee have to take into account a range of factors. Although scientific knowledge is key, areas such as technology, the impact of actions upon the competitiveness of UK industry, social circumstances (particularly fuel poverty) and fiscal circumstances all have to be considered. There is a trade-off to be made between the cost of mitigation and how much we are willing to accept risk to ecosystems and certain parts of the planet. Furthermore, there are both benefits and costs of tackling climate change, some of which are outlined below:

Benefits:

  • Improved air quality
  • More active lifestyles
  • Fewer (net) road traffic accidents
  • Time savings from reduced congestion
  • Less water abstraction
  • Improved health from better diet

Costs:

  • Landscape impact of renewables
  • Hazardous waste (and risk of major incidents) from nuclear
  • Road accidents from walking and cycling
  • Air quality impacts of biomass for heat
  • Airstream quality and upstream fuel impacts of coal carbon capture and storage

Some work has been done to calculate the net impact of tackling climate change but the error bars are large and more work is needed. The current recommendation that the Committee on Climate Change are suggesting would costs less than 1% of the UK’s GDP.

The UK leading into Paris

The UK is currently in a good position leading up to COP21 having met the first of our five yearly carbon budgets – although it must be stressed that this is largely due to the financial crisis and economic slowdown rather than specific policies. There is still a lot to do to meet the 2nd and 3rd targets and the 4th is going to be a very big step down.

A key stage in reaching these targets will be to have a largely decarbonised power sector by 2030. Matthew suggests a highlight for future research could be the wider use of low-carbon heat, for example having this in 15% of homes by 2030. To ensure the success of policies relating to these changes more research also needs to be done into behaviours – what prevents people taking up green actions and determines their reactions to environmental policies?

It was emphasised that we also have a poor evidence base and lack of data for working with the industry and agriculture sectors, so these areas need greater attention in future. Furthermore, despite success in reducing vehicle emissions by a greater amount than expected (due to EU regulation) it will now be even more challenging to reduce them further.

The Committee are due to release a progress report on both adaptation and mitigation in June outlining the key risks to achieving the 2050 carbon target and will also advise on the level of the 5th carbon budget (the 2028-32 budget as these are set 12 years in advance) at the same time COP 21 is taking place in December.

Help in different areas will be important to the Committee this year and well beyond. From scientists better near-term climate models, better monitoring and understanding of the full life-cycle of greenhouse gas emissions and their wider environmental impacts and linking the science of diversity, ecology and evolution to policy debates about climate will all be helpful for the committee’s work. However, this will need to be combined with better understanding of people’s behaviours and gaining the optimal balance between adaptation and mitigation, as well as understanding the best timing and level (local, regional or national) at which to apply measures.

Watch a video of the talk on our YouTube channel.

The Post-2015 Goals: Environmental Sustainability, Science and Development

By Bora Ristic, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP student

 

Seedling This week, the next round of UN negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are under way in New York. The SDGs aim to coordinate and promote development across the world in critical areas, including health, education, governance, and environment amongst others. Imperial College PhDs (myself included) recently exchanged ideas with David Hallam from the Department for International Development about his current work on the SDGs to be agreed later this year. The talk centred on how this ambitious global development effort could be successful and, very broadly, what role science and the environmental research being conducted at Imperial can play.

Too many targets?

The UK holds the position that there are too many goals and too many targets currently under discussion. The 17 goals and 169 associated targets are not easily memorable to put it mildly. David argued that development agencies cannot do all at once, and will inevitably prioritise some goals and targets over others. Such prioritizing can reduce the impact of the SDGs as the easier options may be chosen over the harder ones.

On the other hand, a set of easily communicable goals and targets could mean oversimplification – once again lowering their effectiveness. These goals, after all, reflect what every UN member sees as the ends any society should pursue. Clearly a delicate balance must be struck between a manageable list and the inclusion of many different concerns.

Science and the SDGs

Science plays an integral role in these policies. Science can determine baseline values, measure current performance, and determine policy effectiveness against these. It can help in identifying the particular barriers to achieving goals and also elucidate means for removing them, such as the knowledge and the innovations that can feed the world sustainably and provide it with low-carbon energy.

For science to do any of this however, there must be communication between development needs and the research conducted. DfID uses a tendering method for its outsourced research needs and this could be applied more broadly. It is still important to have fundamental research, but the relevance of research to needs could be improved if funding criteria target the SDGs.

Limits of Science

Limitations to the application of science to the development agenda also exist. Scientists are trained in assessing uncertainty in their measurements and predictions. However, uncertainties are often misunderstood by the general public and are unpalatable to decision makers who push for clear answers.

Uncertainty is not the only limit to what science can deliver for development. Science often is simply trumped by political considerations in policy making. For example, the UNFCCC target of keeping global warming under 2°C was not determined by science, but by negotiations taking science into account. This is related to the question of weighting the interests of the disadvantaged duly and brings us to the main challenge posed for the application of science to development.

Science and Values

The SDGs, and development in general, deal with fundamental questions of value. What is development about? Do we want wealthy people? Healthy people? Educated in which way? Development is always driven by a sense of fairness or dignity or other values. We need environmentally friendly economies because people are suffering and we should help those in need (or at least not harm them). More ambitiously, we may consider the interests of future generations or the environment itself as imposing duties on us. So, how can science, with its objectivity, help us in this normative terrain?

While the interplay between science and values is hotly contested, one philosopher of science, Otto Neurath, saw science as a “a social practice – a discursive formation with emancipatory potential.” Science is influenced by social interests and projects but its choice of subject for investigation can deliver beneficial outcomes to human or non-human well-being. Such a conception of science as a sort of discourse ‘format’ could be applied to the development of the SDGs. With it, we would limit ourselves to the consideration of measurable well-being as targets for goals. This may enable easier communication between diverse perspectives, and may lead policy to deliver tangible results more readily.

Achieving the SDGs

There was also substantial discussion on practical steps for achieving the goals and targets. As with research funding, the work of development agencies and their staff could be assessed on the basis of the SDGs.

In terms of the negotiating process, a promising approach that is being adopted in the climate negotiations is one which calls for countries to report their nation’s intended contributions in advance of substantive negotiations. Coordinating bodies can then calculate the total individual measures in advance and determine if together they would meet the targets. Gaps can then be identified and parties called upon to address them. Secondly, instead of countries arguing they will not take ambitious measures until other parties do so, such an advance announcement creates competition between parties for the best measures.

As with any international effort, the SDG process suffers from the lack of a higher authority to ensure ambition and compliance. The anarchic setting of international agreements means parties can only deal in the currencies of goodwill and reputation. Preview and review processes, coupled with a scientific mind-set such as we have discussed above, could help to develop and achieve ambitious but feasible goals in such a setting.

We are extremely grateful to David for his visit and the fruitful conversation he made possible.

Meeting global water needs: More than a pipe dream

Water + hands smallThe Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

by Dr Karl Smith, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Every waking hour, I ingest water. Not always in its purest form, but near enough. Energy is important and right now (and rightly so), carbon is capturing headlines.  But water is fundamental to our livelihoods.

The UN has designated 22 March World Water Day: “a day to celebrate water”.  And why not? Never mind that it’s essential to all life forms. For modern living, it’s  a necessity: we need 10 litres of water to make one sheet of paper; 182 litres to make a kilo of plastic.  We’re not about to run out of seawater, but what about drinkable freshwater? A glance at the UN’s water statistics  reveals the urgency of our situation.

A global challenge

In developing countries, 90% of wastewater flows untreated into water bodies.  An estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide drink water contaminated with faeces. By 2030, 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress.

In 60% of European cities (population > 100,000 people), groundwater is being used faster than  it can be replenished. As the primary source of drinking water worldwide, groundwater is vitally important. In fact, groundwater comprises 97% of all global freshwater potentially available for human use (the UN don’t qualify this definition, but one can probably assume that 97% of all drinking water is groundwater – further enlightenment on this is welcome). Moreover, our use of groundwater is increasing by 1-2% per year.

If we look west to the US then we reach California – a drought stricken state with, according to senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, only one year of water left in its reservoirs and rapidly disappearing groundwater.

Focussing on cities

Dwindling water resources are a global challenge. However, at present (again, this is UN data), 54% of the world’s population live in cities. By 2050, this figure will approach 70%, with 93% of urbanisation occurring in developing countries.  If you reduce the problem to securing clean water for city dwellers, then it becomes markedly more manageable – at least, if you have big budgets.

London is currently tussling with the proposed Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT), a £4.2 billion (at 2011 prices) “super sewer” designed to contain overflows of sewage, currently in the order of tens of millions of tonnes a year, and hence prevent the pollution of the river Thames.

Although it will help future-proof the capital against climate change, the TTT won’t do much else than divert sewer overflows: a big spend for one single solution.  Moreover, its carbon footprint is not small.  A shortcoming of some climate change adaptation interventions is that, through their production and often, operation, they may only amplify the root of the problem.

One solution, multiple benefits

Green roof
A green roof in Chicago

If we want value for money, then why not demand more than just one benefit?   One stone, but at the very least, two birds.

Consider combined heat and power (CHP) plants, which generate two energy types, at improved efficiencies of conversion, from a single fuel. Do we therefore need one pipe network for drinking water, one for waste water and one for stormwater? Plus an array of energy intensive pumps?

Urban floods are invariably caused by runoff from impermeable surfaces – roofs, roads and pavements.  A carpet of urban greenery can both trap and, via the plant root network and soil media, decontaminate runoff, removing the need for a centralised stormwater system. The grey city can grow green.

For cities to be self-sufficient and resource-smart, we can’t let stormwater dissipate into drains. Drinking harvested rainwater is problematic, but irrigation of city greenery – not only garden plants but also, fruit and vegetable crops – is not.

Plants are truly multi-functional. Their benefits include enhancements to human health and well-being, as well as mitigating the urban heat island effect and promoting biodiversity. This is the Blue Green Dream paradigm: the smart use of plants, in concert with the local environment and manmade systems such as storage tanks, to sustainably manage water resources and also, deliver myriad urban benefits.

 

The Blue Green Dream – a multi partner, Climate KIC funded, Imperial College led project – is harnessing ecosystem systems to achieve climate change resilience.  For further information, see the project website or contact the project manager, Dr Karl M. Smith.

Time to Act climate march – what was missing?

by Jonathan Bosch

climate protesters
Over 20,000 people attended the march

On Saturday, 7th March 2015, I attended the Time to Act climate march. After a winding route through the historic streets of central London, an impromptu sit-down on the Strand, and a spirit-raising day under an early spring sun, we converged on Parliament Square where a number of speakers from charities, trade unions, political parties and other activist groups launched their rallying cries for climate justice, aiming their anger squarely upon the walls of the houses of parliament: the centre of British democracy – those with the power to make change, but who perhaps far too often stand in its way.

For me, it was a particularly sobering experience. Not since my first protest attendance at the million-strong “No War on Iraq” protest of February 2003 had I attended a public protest – it’s still feted as probably the largest protest movement in human history – and I was enthusiastic this time, to show up, hold up my placard, and join thousands of concerned citizens to convey our collective anger at what I see to be the complicit and complacent inaction of our government on the urgent challenges of climate and environmental change, in opposition to the rational, fair minded and compassionate citizenry of the United Kingdom.

However, after the excitement of the day had worn off, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat deflated by the realities of the movement as it exists today, nearly four decades after global warming was raised as an international concern at the World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979. A decade too, before I was even born.

timetoact2My main concern was that the attendees, despite coming seemingly from all walks of life, were not justly represented by the big-name speakers in attendance. For sure, there was representation by Greenpeace and Avaaz and many of the usual charitable organisations. There was also representation by a number of trade unions and the equally impassioned orators of environmental-cause NGOs and celebrity activists.

But none of the mainstream political parties were present, bar one left-wing Labour MP, John McDonnell. Is climate change an issue undeserving of the legitimacy of our democratic process?

There were however a few refreshingly erudite voices in the form of Bangladeshi campaigner Rumana Hashem, comedian, Francesca Martinez, and the blazing writer and activist – via recorded video message – Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything.

Then there was 12 year-old Laurel, who spoke simply on behalf of her generation.

Our climate legacy is to 12 year old Laurel and her generation.

 

A science-shaped gap

The most invisible group, but those very often with the most to say, were the climate scientists themselves.

There were no scientists in the list of speakers; no scientific media organisations handing out materials; and no science representative block, as there were for many environmental interest groups.

Scientists are absent from the fight. They reliably churn out results, smoothing the climate curves, adding degrees to our predicted future surface temperatures, and adding calamity to the already calamitous ice sheet collapses, and yet we/they stay as staunchly apolitical as ever, perhaps for fear of being discredited as impartial scientists.

But to me, it’s the voice that is most obviously missing from the activist debate. Yes, there are scientists on government panels, and in IPCC working groups, but these are only the places that scientists have a duty to be. It is clear however that any paradigm shifting fight, as demonstrated in the previous century, requires grassroots activism. Not accepting the status quo. It was how civil rights were won in the US, how the suffragettes won women’s rights, and how wars became politically toxic worldwide.

The point often repeated by the many trade union and intellectual activists is that climate change is not only a non-partisan issue, but an issue which many interest groups would gain leverage if they acted together. For example, the occupy movement, anti-capitalist, and others all have a strong mandate to rid the system of austerity politics, rampant capitalism, and the huge projected industrial emissions that go along with it. Likewise scientists are fighting a lonely battle if they insist on fighting from high up in their ivory towers.

For the reasons above, and for the very longevity of our own species, I believe that it has become the job of scientists, not only to carry on doing the science that is imperative to human progress, but also to become activists, reporters and educators on this, the main issue of the 21st century.

 

 

 Guardian coverage of the march

High altitude agriculture – The challenges of adapting to the changing water supply in the Himalayas

by Bhopal Pandeya, Research Associate (ESPA Fellowship), Grantham Institute

Agricultural land
Agricultural lands in the Himalayan region

Mountains are often referred to as ‘water towers’ as they provide fresh water to people and biodiversity. The Himalayan region is one of the few hot spots where several big rivers originate and supply water to hundreds of millions of people across the mountains and further downstream. However, higher up in the mountains especially in trans-Himalayan region, there is very little accessible water for local communities. The region receives very low rainfall and thus water supply is largely dependent on the timely occurrence of snow fall and ice melts in the upper mountains. The Upper Kaligandaki Basin (located in Nepal) is one such area where water scarcity is very high. Upland communities are constantly facing serious water shortage which particularly affects their agricultural land.

In Upper Kaligandaki Basin, croplands are located along the river valleys which act as oases in the Himalayas. Traditionally, local people practice an intensive cropping system, growing different crops and vegetables to sustain their lives, and agricultural remains the main source of local livelihoods. But, local people are experiencing increasing difficulty with farming largely due to the unpredictable nature of water supply in local streams. They are now concerned by the changing pattern of snow fall in upper mountain areas and its impact on water flow in the lower regions. People are trying to cope with this situation by adopting various measures such as introducing more resilient crops like apple and walnut, using water harvesting systems and equitably sharing available water. This demonstrates local people’s extraordinary adaptive skills in managing their resources sustainably. To some extent, these measures are helpful in coping with these uncertainties.

apple trees
Apple farming in the Upper Kaligandaki Basin – an adaptive agricultural practice

Recent developments in the region, especially the construction of roads and the expansion of human settlements, are proving unsustainable and are making already scarce agricultural lands even more vulnerable. These activities lack proper consideration of how to maintain key ecosystem services provided by water and soil resources. Agricultural land and traditional water supply systems are particularly threatened by constant encroachment and land degradation (erosion and landslides) resulting from these activities. As a result, local communities’ main sources of livelihoods are in great danger. At the same time, the whole region is passing through a socio-cultural and demographic transformation which is also challenging especially considering the lack of enthusiasm of younger generations for farming.

Development activities clearly demand integration of a natural capital based approach

In this situation, an innovative approach can build a better understanding of these major ecosystem services and integrate them into local policy and decision making. As one elderly local firmly put it, “our farmlands are highly productive, no need to go abroad for earning… we can earn better here. We produce highly priced crops, fruits and vegetables. But, there are some big problems… water supply is becoming more disruptive, soil loss is extensive and there is also less and less participation of the younger generation in farming practices. We need to address these problems immediately, so we can improve the agricultural production and increase our household incomes”. Clearly there is a great need for a locally suited ecosystem services approach (guided by scientific, socio-political and economic understandings) to improve local livelihoods.

 

Find out more about the Mountain-EVO project

 

This post was originally published on the ESPA blog. View original post.

Hard Evidence: will climate change affect the spread of tropical diseases?

Asian Tiger Mosquito
The Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus) can transmit dengue fever

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

By Dr Paul Parham, Honorary Lecturer in Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Many tropical diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease and dengue are transmitted to humans via mosquitoes and other carriers known as vectors. These vector-borne diseases continue to have a major impact on human health in the developing world: each year, more than a billion people become infected and around a million people die. In addition, around one in six cases of illness and disability worldwide arise from these diseases.

Malaria arguably continues to attract the most attention of all the vector-borne diseases by virtue of causing the greatest global disease burden. However, others such as dengue are not only resurgent in some regions, but threaten a vast proportion of the world’s population.

Climate change remains a substantial threat to future human health and since the behaviour of disease carriers like mosquitoes is known to be extremely sensitive to temperature and rainfall, it seems unquestionable that climate change will affect many, if not all, of these diseases. What is less clear, however, is the extent to which climate increases the risk of becoming infected in certain regions compared to other factors such as poverty or fragile health systems.

In addition, although the number of new cases of diseases such as malaria appears to be declining worldwide, it is still increasing in many regions for a variety of reasons; the continued spread of insecticide resistance, changes in land use, and difficulties in maintaining political interest pose considerable challenges. Which of these factors will be most influential over the coming decades remains up for debate and one that was raised in a special edition of Philosophical Transactions B.

Changes in risk

The latest research, however, is clear and consistent in many of its findings. Different diseases, transmitted by different vectors, respond in different ways to changing weather and climate patterns. Climate change is very likely to favour an increase in the number of dengue cases worldwide, while many important mosquito populations that are able to transmit devastating diseases are changing in their distribution.

The latest maps show that many areas of Europe (including the UK) could become increasingly hospitable for mosquitoes that transmit dengue over the coming decades (the map below shows a projected change in suitable habitat for the Aedes albopictus mosquito). Similarly, other mosquito range expansions are likely to occur in the US and eastern Asia. If dengue and/or chikungunya are imported into these regions, there will be a considerable increase in the worldwide number of vulnerable individuals.

European map of simulated Aedes albopictus habitat suitability based on one future climate projection for the period 2045-2054.
European map of simulated Aedes albopictus habitat suitability based on one future climate projection for the period 2045-2054.

It is also clear that small changes in these so-called risk maps can have very large public health impacts. Tick-borne diseases (such as Lyme disease) are also predicted to expand in range as climate changes. Although, as before, plenty of other factors are likely to contribute, meaning that direct causation is very hard to attribute.

It is important to remember too that climate change is not just global warming; the latter refers to an increase in global mean temperatures, but there is also an overwhelming body of evidence demonstrating that rainfall is at least as important for many vector-borne diseases. Rainfall episodes have also been shown to provide a very good early-warning sign a few months in advance for outbreaks of West Nile Virus.

New research on African anti-malaria mosquito control programmes that involve spraying houses (to kill indoor mosquitoes) and distributing bed nets also shows that both temperature and rainfall can influence the degree to which programmes decrease new infections and, crucially, their cost-effectiveness. However, whether or not this is substantial enough to affect regional policy decisions about scaling up mosquito control programmes depends on factors such as how rapidly insecticide resistance emerges, the human immune response to malaria, and country-specific conditions.

In terms of malaria elimination in Africa, adopting the same approach in all affected regions is unlikely to be the best way forward. However, there is some new evidence to suggest that if efforts continue to be concentrated on scaling-up current intervention programmes in regions close to elimination, the longer-term effects of climate change will become far less important. Indeed, one of the most effective ways of protecting human health against climate change in the long-term is to further strengthen current disease control efforts.

Mathematical models

As with the formulation of public health policies to deal with diseases such as Ebola, flu, and HIV, mathematical models are valuable tools that are widely used to make predictions about how different carrier-borne diseases are likely to respond to climatic changes. How reliable these predictions are is an important question and, like many areas of science, include unavoidable uncertainties. For example, people may change their behaviour and actions as climate change evolves – for example by migrating to other areas – which evidently makes forecasting more difficult.

New evidence has also shown that disease vectors may evolve in under a decade to changes in temperature, which conflicts with many current models that assume climate change only affects their ecology, not their evolution. Predictions that might be affected by climate change must therefore not only take account of these uncertainties, if they’re to be more reliable and useful, but also recognise that these predictions cannot strictly be disproved until the future arrives.

This remains a very active research field, but considerable progress in our understanding has been made over the last ten to 15 years. Better data on the links between vectors, diseases they carry and the environment is definitely required, as are better ways of quantifying disease risk for different populations and different diseases.

Seven steps to understanding climate impacts and assessing risks. Philosophical Transactions B

Seven steps to understanding climate impacts and assessing risks.
Philosophical Transactions B

Future challenges

Many diseases have received very little attention so far on how climate change may affect future trends. One example is onchocerciasis (river blindness), for which tentative predictions suggest that we might expect substantial increases in the number of disease vectors in certain African regions over the coming decades.

Almost all models are currently based on single diseases, but many populations are unfortunately burdened with multiple diseases at any one time; understanding how climate change affects interactions between these diseases has attracted little attention to date.

One other important challenge for the field is the mismatch between the data current global climate models are able to provide and the information required by local public health officials to make more informed decisions; continued improvements in computing power are essential to progress. The predictions of our current models are not perfect and improvements in our understanding are certainly required.

To date, we have tended to react to disease outbreaks as they occur, but we need an increased focus on being more proactive; we cannot stop outbreaks of many of these diseases, but proactive risk management is less expensive (and more effective) than responding after a crisis. Ultimately, the challenge is not to address specific health risks due solely to climate change, but instead to ensure sustained progress is made towards decreasing the number of deaths and cases of these diseases for future generations.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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The global health benefits of tackling climate change

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

by Professor Paolo Vineis and Pauline Scheelbeek, School of Public Health
Cycling

It is sometimes claimed that addressing climate change with proper policies is too expensive and could lead to a further decline in the economy. However, the co-benefits of implementation of climate change mitigation strategies for the health sector are usually overlooked. The synergy between policies for climate change mitigation in sectors such as energy use (e.g. for heating), agriculture, food production and transportation may have overall benefits that are much greater than the sum of single interventions (Haines et al, 2009). Here we describe a few examples of climate change mitigation strategies that have important co-benefits for global health.

  1. Reducing CO2 admission by promotion of active transport

The transportation sector is often the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in urban areas. Policy makers have tried to reduce these emissions by discouraging car travel and promoting other means of (active) transport. Active transport, such as cycling and walking, increases daily physical activity. Physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of non-communicable diseases all over the world. It has been estimated that the combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give large health benefits, notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from coronary heart disease (10-19% in London, 11-25% in Delhi according to Woodcock et al, 2009). Also obesity, which is increasing dramatically all over the world, particularly in children, could effectively be reduced by a more active lifestyle. A 30-minute walk per day could – on many occasions – be enough to even out slight caloric excess.

  1. Domestic energy management & reduction of cooking/heating emissions

Improving heating and cooking systems – for example by making them more efficient – reduces energy consumption. Improved models of stoves (electrical vs biomass) allow a 15-times reduction in the emission of particles and other pollutants, thus contributing to decreased emissions in the atmosphere. Especially in developing countries – where old stoves are common – these improvements could also have a considerable positive impact on health: cooking on simple wood or coal stoves currently forms a major source of indoor pollution and increases risk of certain chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The potential effectiveness of this strategy was shown by Wilkinson et al: they calculated that if 150 million low-emission cookstoves were introduced in India, this could lead to the prevention of an estimated 1.3 million deaths from COPD and hundreds of thousands of deaths from other diseases such as coronary heart disease (Wilkinson, et al 2009). Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental causes of death worldwide, with household air pollution accounting for about 3·5-4 million deaths every year (Gordon et al, 2014).

  1. Reductions in CO2 through reduced meat production

meat production diagramMeat production is highly inefficient energetically: it requires an extremely high use of water and land per unit of meat.  One fifth of all greenhouse gases worldwide are related to methane production from livestock farms.  Reduction of meat intake by consumers would lower meat production and is therefore often promoted as climate change mitigation strategy. The figure shows that a high intake of meat is also associated with increased disease risk, in particular for certain cancers and cardiovascular disease (WCRF, 2007). Reduced meat consumption would therefore also have a major impact on public health. It has been estimated that a 30% reduction in livestock production in the UK would reduce cardiovascular deaths by 15% (Friel et al, 2009).

 

  1. Low carbon energy production

Non-renewable energy production, for example coal burning, is a major contributor to worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries have adopted policies to reduce polluting energy production and stimulate production of (renewable) energy through cleaner sources. For example, since 2000, the government in the Chinese Shanxi province has promoted several initiatives (including factory shutdowns) with the goal of reducing coal burning emissions. The annual average particulate matter (PM10) concentrations decreased from 196 μg/m3 in 2001 to 89 μg/m3 in 2010, which – as a matter of fact – is still very high for Western standards. It has been estimated that the DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) lost in Shanxi had decreased by 56.92% as a consequence of the measures (Tang et al, 2014).  The IPCC 5th assessment report stresses that the main health co-benefits from climate change mitigation policies come from substituting polluting sources of energy for renewable and cleaner sources, with a considerable effect on the improvement of air quality.

 

Practical conclusions

The co-benefits from climate change mitigation for the health sector have not yet been completely identified and quantified. The topic does not appear on the priority list of political discourse: relevant sectors, including those involved in non-communicable disease prevention (Pearce et al, 2014), transportation, agriculture, food production and climate change (Alleyne et al, 2013), still work separately, while collaboration would improve the synergy between health improvement and climate change mitigation and maximise benefits for both.

 

References

Alleyne G, Binagwaho A, Haines A, Jahan S, Nugent R, Rojhani A, Stuckler D; Lancet NCD Action Group. Embedding non-communicable diseases in the post-2015 development agenda. Lancet. 2013 Feb 16;381(9866):566-74. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61806-6

Friel S, Dangour AD, Garnett T, Lock K, Chalabi Z, Roberts I, Butler A, Butler CD, Waage J, McMichael AJ, Haines A.  Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture.  Lancet 2009; 374: 2016-25.

Gordon SB, Bruce NG, Grigg J, Hibberd PL, Kurmi OP, Lam KB, Mortimer K, Asante KP, Balakrishnan K, Balmes J, Bar-Zeev N, Bates MN, Breysse PN, Buist S, Chen Z, Havens D, Jack D, Jindal S, Kan H, Mehta S, Moschovis P, Naeher L, Patel A, Perez-Padilla R, Pope D, Rylance J, Semple S, Martin WJ 2nd. Respiratory risks from household air pollution in low and middle income countries. Lancet Respir Med. 2014 Oct;2(10):823-60. doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70168-7

Haines A, McMichael AJ, Smith KR, Roberts I, Woodcock J, Markandya A, Armstrong BG, Campbell-Lendrum D, Dangour AD, Davies M, Bruce N, Tonne C, Barrett M, Wilkinson P. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: overview and implications for policy makers. Lancet. 2009 Dec 19;374(9707):2104-14. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61759-1. Epub 2009 Nov 26.

Pearce N, Ebrahim S, McKee M, Lamptey P, Barreto ML, Matheson D, Walls H, Foliaki S, Miranda J, Chimeddamba O, Marcos LG, Haines A, Vineis P. The road to 25×25: how can the five-target strategy reach its goal? Lancet Glob Health. 2014 Mar;2(3):e126-8. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70015-4.

Tang D, Wang C, Nie J, Chen R, Niu Q, Kan H, Chen B, Perera F; Taiyuan CDC. Health benefits of improving air quality in Taiyuan, China. Environ Int. 2014 Dec;73:235-42. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2014.07.016. Epub 2014 Aug 27.

Wilkinson P, Smith KR, Davies M, Adair H,  Armstrong BG, Barrett M, Bruce N, Haines A, Hamilton I, Oreszczyn T,  Ridley I, Tonne C and Chalabi Z. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: household energy. 2009. The Lancet, 374: 9705 (P1917 – 29)

World Cancer Research Fund. Recommendations Booklet. Available from:  http://www.wcrf.org/

Woodcock J, Edwards P, Tonne C, Armstrong BG, Ashiru O, Banister D, Beevers S, Chalabi Z, Chowdhury Z, Cohen A, Franco OH, Haines A, Hickman R, Lindsay G, Mittal I, Mohan D, Tiwari G, Woodward A, Roberts I. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: urban land transport. Lancet. 2009 Dec 5;374(9705):1930-43. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61714-1. Epub 2009 Nov 26.

With climate models, simpler isn’t necessarily better

Grantham Institute Co-Director Professor Joanna Haigh discusses a recent paper which argues that  existing climate models ‘run hot’ and overstate the extent of manmade climate change.

Retro filtered picture of smoky chimneys silhouettes against sunIt is perplexing that some climate change sceptics, who expend much energy in decrying global circulation (computer) models of the climate, on the basis that they cannot properly represent the entire complexities of the climate system and/or that they contain too many approximations, are now resorting to an extremely simplified model to support their arguments.

The model used in the Sci. Bull. article is a very useful tool for conceptualising the factors which contribute to the relationship between increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global average temperature – indeed, we use such models as teaching aids for students studying atmospheric physics – but it is in no way fit for purpose as an accurate predictor of climate change.  It requires as input the values of a number of parameters and, fundamentally, the choice of these values determines the predicted temperatures

Key here is the “feedback parameter” which represents the knock-on effects of changes in the atmosphere on the initial response to greenhouse gas warming.  A positive feedback will make the temperature change larger and a negative one reduce it.  For example, as the atmosphere warms it can hold more water vapour which itself is a greenhouse gas, acting to enhance the initial carbon dioxide-induced warming and thus giving a positive feedback.  The physics of this process is very well-understood.  There are a number of other, both positive and negative, feedback processes but overall, analyses of meteorological observations, modelling and understanding of the physical processes point to a significantly positive value.  In the present paper the authors choose a very small value, based on temperatures measured in ice cores over the 810,000 year period of ice ages and inter-glacials.  Their analysis is incomplete but anyway not relevant to changes in global climate over decadal-to-century timescales.

Thus by choosing an inappropriate value of the feedback parameter, and also judicious choices of other parameters, the authors end up with their “models run hot” conclusion.  Must try harder.

Internship Experiences: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog

by Peter Blair, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP student

Thames-Basin
The Thames Basin, a Map Highlighting Urban Areas

The Thames Basin is set to face many challenges in the future: climate change, a growing population and economic requirements all present developmental challenges, as well as major sources of uncertainty. Having previously worked on a voluntary project producing a vision for planning in the Great Lakes Basin over the next hundred years, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) were interested in applying the same methodology to the Thames Basin to determine how we may best plan for the future in this area.

During the summer of 2014, prior to starting the NERC Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership at Imperial College, I undertook the exciting opportunity of an internship with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, looking at the future of planning of development in the Thames Basin.

Who are SOM?

SOM, short for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, are a world-leading firm of architects, structural engineers and urban planners. They have designed buildings such as the Burj Khalifa and the Broadgate Tower (where their London office is now based), and have worked on the Imperial College Campus master plan, amongst many other projects.

What did I do?

I used SOM’s Great Lakes investigation as an inspiration for looking at planning in the Thames Basin, identifying the assets that the basin has, for example extensive infrastructure, a thriving economy, a history of innovation and a rare depth of culture, the issues that it faces, including overcoming archaic governance boundaries, managing water in the face of both drought and flood, and coping with the change and uncertainty that climate change brings. I produced a booklet identifying first ideas for a vision of what planning in the Thames Basin could be built around in the future. Elements of this vision include integrating the various planning documents that exist into a more cohesive, basin-level plan, recognition of the positive feedback cycles that exist between ‘green’ and ‘blue’ policies and using infrastructure to develop a holistically connected basin.

What did I gain?

I had a fantastic time at SOM: I met a lot of great people with amazing ideas and skills, and was also able to develop myself while there. The internship gave me the freedom and time to develop new skills that are hugely useful, but which I would probably not have had the opportunity to investigate otherwise. One example would be ArcGIS, which allows for the creative display of map-based data, and which I will be able to utilise as part of my PhD, but which I may never otherwise have had to opportunity to learn. I was also able to ‘dip my toe’ into the corporate environment, without having to jump straight in. This showed me the different emphasis which is placed on various aspects of work in business compared to academia: the importance of delivering a positivist message and looking at the big picture, distilling a great amount of information into a short message and using images to convey meaning.

What did SOM gain?

Hopefully SOM feel as though they have gained from my undertaking of this internship as well. As I was a short-term member of the team, SOM were able to work on a different kind of project that was perhaps less corporate and which required different skills. While many other members of the team were working on multiple projects at any one time, I was also able to give my focussed attention to the Thames Basin project. This internship has also strengthened the link between SOM and Imperial College, and building links with academia is something that SOM have been very keen to do.

 

Find out more about Peter’s PhD project

2014 – the warmest year on record

Thermometer2A summary of global temperature for 2014 from NASA and NOAA has just been published, showing that the average global temperature for 2014 was 0.69°C above the average for the 20th century. The small margin of uncertainty in calculating average global temperature means that the exact ranking of 2014 cannot be distinguished from the previous record years of 2005 and 2010, but it is nominally the warmest year on record. The ten warmest years have all occurred since 1998.

Professor Jo Haigh, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute, commented on the report saying that: “This and other indicators are all pointing in the same direction of continued global warming, reflecting the overall upward trend in average global temperatures”

A large amount of warming was seen in the oceans with globally-averaged sea surface temperature 0.57°C above the 20th century average. This is consistent with recent studies that have suggested that much of the extra energy in the Earth system is going in to the oceans. You can read more about the significance of ocean heat uptake in our blog post.

An update from the Met Office on global temperatures is expected later this month and we look forward to seeing the further detail that this will add.

See the full report on the NOAA website.

Who’s responsible for tackling climate change? – COP 20 outcomes

Smog in guangzhou1000
Smog in Guangzhou, China

By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute

An agreement produced by the 20th Conference of the Parties in Lima, Peru, noted ‘with grave concern’ that countries’ current pledges on emissions reductions are insufficient to keep global temperature rise within either 2°C or 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels. This is indeed a serious concern because temperature changes of just a few degrees are enough to change the climate significantly. Rising sea levels, melting mountain glaciers and polar ice caps and increases in extreme precipitation have already been observed. These trends will continue with ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, and it is expected that we will continue to see an increase in extreme high sea levels, an increase in the intensity of the heaviest rain, and changes in the global distribution of rainfall.

The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have until March 2015 to provide updated emissions pledges. The 1994 UNFCCC protocol aims to achieve the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’. The protocol made it clear that countries have ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, implying that developed nations who are responsible for historical emissions should make the deepest cuts. An agreement drafted during COP 20 added the phrase ‘in light of different national circumstances’. The new deal to some extent blurs the distinction that has existed between developed and developing nations. However, it remains to be seen exactly how the responsibility to reduce emissions will be spread between different countries.

China’s per capita emissions are now at EU levels, but when total cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases are taken into account – carbon dioxide is long lived in the atmosphere so the total emissions over time are what matter – the five countries most responsible for global warming on a per capita basis are the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Russia and Germany. When countries are ranked by their absolute contribution to global warming so far, the top five are the United States, China, Russia, Brazil and India, and the United Kingdom is number seven on the list. Of course, the reason for the United Kingdom’s high ranking on both these lists because it industrialised early. Different studies disagree on the exact ranking, but on a per capita basis the developed nations bear most of the responsibility for the temperature increases we have already seen. Nevertheless, there is increasingly a need for the richer developing nations to take some action as well.

The coming months are a critical time for the global climate change negotiations. There have already been encouraging signs: the United Kingdom and the EU have led the way with ambitious pledges, and China and the United States have taken a positive step forward with their recent bilateral agreement. However, more needs to be done. It is right that the United Kingdom and the EU are leading the way on this, but it is also vital that the political will remains to tackle climate change as we move into a crucial stage of the negotiations. Action is urgently needed – in order to avoid temperatures rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, global emissions should peak by 2020. Delaying the peak in emissions until 2030 will increase the costs of taking action and make it very difficult to keep to this target. Meeting the 2°C target will require the leaders of the developed world to continue to increase the level of ambition over the coming months.

Climate change: positive messages on the international scene

By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute

This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.

smoke stacksThe Twentieth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) – the latest in a series of meetings of the decision making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change –began in Lima this week. Many in the media are quick to point to the difficulty of obtaining international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and to denounce COP 15, which took place in Copenhagen in 2009, as a failure. Far from being a failure, the Copenhagen meeting paved the way for future climate change action. World leaders agreed ‘that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time’ and emphasised their ‘strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, and it was agreed that ‘deep cuts in global emissions are required’. The Copenhagen accord also said that a new Copenhagen Green Climate Fund would be established to support developing countries to limit or reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.

The last objective is in progress: the green climate fund was set up at COP 16, held in Cancun, Mexico in 2010, and several major countries have pledged money. Japan has pledged $1.5 billion, the US has pledged $3 billion, Germany and France have pledged $1 billion each, the UK pledged $1.13 billion and Sweden pledged over $500m. This brings us close to the informal target of raising $10 billion by the end of the year. The goal is to increase funding to $100 billion a year by 2020. There have also been several smaller donations. This is a key step in tackling climate change, because the gap between developed and developing countries in their ability to respond to climate change and their level of responsibility for causing the problem must be addressed.

Obtaining international agreement to reduce emissions is a real challenge. It is not surprising that it is difficult to reach consensus on a course of action between a large range of different countries at different stages of development who bear differing levels of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to date: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has 196 Parties. However, there has been significant progress towards global emissions reductions, led by the EU, China and the US.

UK commitments

Prior to the Copenhagen COP, the UK Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, and contains a legally binding commitment to reduce UK emissions by at least 80% on 1990 levels by 2050. In addition, the UK Committee on Climate Change has recommended an emissions reduction of 50% on 1990 levels by 2025 in order to meet the longer term target. Some have argued that by taking unilateral action, the UK put itself at risk of losing out economically to countries that had not made such pledges. Competitiveness concerns have been evaluated by the Committee on Climate Change, the body set up as part of the Climate Change Act to advise the UK government on emissions targets. The committee found that ‘costs and competitiveness risks associated with measures to reduce direct emissions (i.e. related to burning of fossil fuels) in currently legislated carbon budgets are manageable.’ Continued support from the EU emissions trading scheme may be needed in the 2020s, but this depends on progress towards a global deal.

By making this commitment the UK has been able to enter into negotiations with other countries from a position of strength. The UK is one of the leading historic emitters of carbon dioxide – it is, of course, the sum total of our emissions beginning in the industrial revolution that will, to a good approximation, determine humanity’s impact on the climate, not the emissions in any given year – and therefore it is right that the UK took the lead by making this commitment. Had we not made such a pledge, it would have put us in a more difficult position when negotiating with other countries, particularly those still on the path to development.

EU pledges

The UK is not now acting alone – other major countries have recently made significant emissions reduction pledges. The recent European Council agreement that the EU should cut emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by 2030 represents a step forward. It was decided that all member states should participate, ‘balancing considerations of fairness and solidarity.’ It was also decided that 27% of energy consumed in the EU should be from renewable sources by 2030, and a more interconnected European energy market should be developed to help deal with the intermittency of renewable sources of energy.

The EU target is still not quite as ambitious as the UK target. However, this latest EU agreement is a significant step in the right direction and demonstrates that international cooperation on a large scale is possible, albeit within a body like the EU with pre-existing economic ties. In addition, it generally costs more to cut emissions the faster the cuts are implemented. If the world is genuine in its commitment to tackling climate change, very significant emissions reductions are ultimately required, and delaying action means having to cut emissions more quickly at a later date – at a higher cost. In addition, the Committee on Climate Change found that despite short term increases in electricity prices, early action means that UK electricity prices are projected to be lower in the medium term compared to a fossil fuel intensive pathway, assuming there is an increase in the carbon price in the future.

China and the US

A recent development is the bilateral agreement between China and the US. China stated that its emissions would peak by 2030, by which time the country aims to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources, and the US pledged to reduce its emissions by 26%-28% on 2005 levels by 2025. Some have suggested that the agreement does not go far enough because China’s emissions will continue to rise until 2030 under the deal, and the US target is not as stringent as the EU or UK targets. However, these pledges coming in the lead up to Lima from the two largest emitters globally are hugely significant, and pave the way for further progress.  China has already made significant progress in reducing the energy intensity (energy per unit of GDP) of its economy: the 11th Five Year Plan, covering the period 2006-2010 aimed to reduce energy intensity by 20%, and achieved a reduction of 19.1%. Despite some disruption to the energy supply, this success in meeting the target demonstrates the Chinese government’s track record of achieving its objectives on green growth. The current five year plan aims to cut energy intensity and carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit of GDP) by a further 16% and 17% respectively on 2010 levels by 2015. It is right that developing countries should be able to grow their economies – China’s per capita GDP is still relatively low – and this has to be balanced with climate change targets.

The EU, China and the US together accounted for just over half of total global carbon dioxide emissions in 2013. Their pledges demonstrate that smaller groups of countries made up of the major emitters can make a difference without waiting for far-reaching international agreement on emissions reductions. Their willingness to act also has the potential to spur other industrialised countries into reducing their own emissions. More action is still needed, but there has been significant progress since the Copenhagen conference, which should pave the way for more ambitious pledges.

Why subsidise renewable energy?

by Ajay Gambhir, Grantham Institute

This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.

 

It is often claimed that intermittent renewable sources of electricity (mainly wind and solar photovoltaics), are too expensive, inefficient and unreliable and that we shouldn’t subsidise them.

Wind turbines at a burning sunsetWhat are the facts?

Last year, governments spent about $550 billion of public money on subsidies for fossil fuels, almost twice as much as in 2009 and about five times as much as they spent subsidising renewables (IEA, World Energy Outlook 2014). This despite a G20 pledge in 2009 to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” that “encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.

Reducing the cost of renewables

There is a key reason why it makes sense to subsidise the deployment of renewable energy technologies instead of fossil fuels. They are currently more expensive than established fossil fuel sources of power generation such as coal- and gas-fired power stations, because the scale of the industries that produce them is smaller and because further innovations in their manufacture and deployment are in the pipeline. As such there needs to be a period of translating laboratory-stage innovations to the field, as well as learning and scaling-up in their manufacture, all of which should bring significant cost reductions. This is only likely to be possible with either:

  • a) a long-term, credible carbon price at a sufficient level to make the business case for developing and deploying renewable energy technologies instead of CO2-emitting technologies; or
  • b) some form of subsidy in the short to medium term, which creates a market for these technologies and provides businesses operating in a less-than-certain policy environment with the incentive to build industrial scale manufacturing plants to produce them (ever more economically as scale and learning effects take hold).

Unfortunately, there is unlikely to be a long-term, credible and significant (“long, loud and legal”) carbon price anytime soon, given the immense political lobbying against action to tackle climate change, and the lack of global coordinated emissions reduction actions, which means any region with a higher carbon price than others puts itself at risk of higher energy prices and lost competitiveness. Whilst subsidies are also likely to raise energy prices, their targeting at specific technologies (often under some fiscal control such as the UK’s levy control framework) means they should have less overall impact on prices. In addition, subsidies have helped to put some technologies on the energy map faster than a weak carbon price would have done and have given a voice to new energy industries to counter that of the CO2-intensive incumbents.

Nevertheless, subsidies should not remain in place for long periods of time, or at fiscally unsustainable levels. Unfortunately some countries, such as Spain, have fallen into that trap, with an unexpectedly high deployment of solar in particular leading to a backlash as fiscal costs escalated, rapid subsidy reductions and the stranding of many businesses engaged in developing these technologies. Germany’s subsidy framework for solar, with its longer term rules on “dynamic degression” levels (which reduce over time depending on deployed capacity in previous years) has proven a better example of balancing the incentive to produce and deploy new technologies with the need to manage fiscal resources carefully (Grantham Institute, 2014).

Reaching grid parity

Fortunately, the price of solar and onshore wind has fallen so much (through manufacturing and deployment scale-up and learning that the subsidies were aimed at in the first place) that they are now approaching or have achieved “grid parity” in several regions – i.e. the same cost of generated electricity as from existing fossil fuel electricity sources. Analysis by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute shows that solar PV, even in its more expensive form on houses’ rooftops, will approach the same level of electricity generation cost as (hard) coal and gas power stations in Germany within the next decade or so, with onshore wind already in the same cost range as these fossil fuel sources.  Subsidies should be phased out as the economics of renewables becomes favourable with just a carbon price (which should be set at a level appropriate to reducing emissions in line with internationally agreed action to avoid dangerous levels of climate change).

It’s important to note that grid parity of electricity generation costs does not account for the very different nature of intermittent renewables compared to fossil fuel power stations, which can very quickly respond to electricity demand peaks and troughs and help ensure that electricity is available as required. For example one common contention is that for every unit of solar capacity in northern latitudes, significant back-up of fossil fuel generation (most often gas turbines, which are quick to ramp up) is required to meet dark winter peak demand in the evenings. Indeed, analysis by the US Brookings Institute based on this principle (as given much publicity in The Economist in July 2014) suggested this would make solar PV and wind much more expensive than nuclear, gas and hydro power.

Unfortunately, and as reflected in the published responses to the Economist article, this analysis has proven to be too simplistic: not accounting for the fact that wind and solar provide complementarities since the wind often blows when the sun’s not shining; that electricity grids can span vast distances (with high voltage direct current lines) which effectively utilise wind and sunlight in different regions at different times; that there is a great deal of R&D into making electricity storage much cheaper; that electricity networks are going to become “smarter” which means they can more effectively balance demand and supply variations automatically; and that the costs of these renewable technologies are coming down so fast that (particularly in the case of solar) its economics might soon be favourable even with significant back-up from gas generation.

In summary, the world is changing, electricity systems are not what they once were, and there is a very sound economic case for meeting the challenge of climate change by deploying low-carbon renewable electricity sources. It is encouraging to see that there has been a rapid rise in the deployment of these technologies over the past decade, but more needs to be done to ensure that the low-carbon world is as low-cost as possible. This means supporting and therefore continuing to subsidise these critical technologies to at least some extent.

 

References

International Energy Agency (2014) World Energy Outlook 2014

Statement from the G20 in Pittsburgh, 2009, available at: https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/Pittsburgh_Declaration.pdf

Grantham Institute, Imperial College London (2014) Solar power for CO2 mitigation, Briefing Paper 11, available at: https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/Public/pdfs/Briefing%20Papers/Solar%20power%20for%20CO2%20mitigation%20-%20Grantham%20BP%2011.pdf

Fraunhofer Institute (2013) Levelized cost of Electricity: Renewable Energy Technologies, available at: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/study-levelized-cost-of-electricity-renewable-energies.pdf

The Economist (2014a) Sun, Wind and Drain, Jul 26th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

The Economist (2014b) Letters to the editor, Aug 16th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/letters/21612125-letters-editor